Do you prefer to start with paid search or natural search?
There are some major differences between Paid Search and Organic Search. A notable difference is that with
Paid Search, one can (and should) advertise on a wide variety of key phrases (at least in the hundreds) and
track the results of their efforts on a key phrase by key phrase basis. With Organic Search, one should focus on
a small set of well trafficked, effective key phrases.
By starting with Paid Search, one can gain explicit data on which key phrases convert into leads and sales, and then use this data to target key phrases for a natural SEO campaign.
Unfortunately, most of our industry fails to lead with Paid Search, preferring instead to launch Organic Search
efforts first. Why is this? Two potential reasons present themselves. This could be due to simple incompetence,
but a less charitable interpretation of industry behavior could be that since Natural Search is typically
FAR more profitable for the search marketing firm. With Paid Search, most of the client’s money goes immediately
to Google and Yahoo in the form of media buys.
In our view, the only legitimate reason a business should focus on Organic Search before proving out keywords
on Paid Search is that the company is in an industry niche that is not hyper competitive and has fairly
obvious primary keywords with significant search volume.